This post was inspired by Flesh Made Fear, which is a pretty cool game all things said (there will probably be another post on it later), but it made the same awkward pacing decision I'm seeing in entirely too many recent survival horror games.
In the original Resident Evil the player will encounter their first zombie in the third room of the game, right after the dining room (unless they have hopelessly bad judgement, in which case they'll be gifted some extra dogs in the first room which will probably kill them at this early point). It takes only a few minutes from getting control of the character until we're playing the game "proper", we've been introduced to the game's main enemy, and we're dealing with it in some way or another. In the sequels it comes at us even faster, with a zombie on-screen as soon as we get control of the character -- before even getting the chance to save our game, we have to learn to deal with zombies, whether by running/slipping past them (almost a necessity in Resident Evil 2's starting scenario!), or by shooting them (more practical in Resident Evil 3, fitting given its larger action emphasis than the first two games).
This, of course, fits in well with how modern "ludology" (lol) wants us to think of first levels (when they're not telling us that level design is drawing lines on screenshots). I'll spare you another Super Mario Bros. 1-1 essay here because I'm sure you already see the connections. Given the supposed lessons that are being widely taught and disseminated, and the origins of the genre discussed above, surely the recent indie fixed-camera survival horror renaissance would be filled with games that start off with a bang and have us making survival decisions right from the jump? After all, it's not just good "ludological pracitce" (lol again), it's fitting for the emotional and aesthetic resonances these games want, a panicked struggle before you're accustomed enough to the game to have any sense of comfort in dealing with enemies.
Credit where it's due -- Alisa gets this right, with a zombie in its second room. One of the numerous ways The Mute House shows its superiority over its contemporaries is by putting a zombie in its second room... provided we don't count the (skippable) prologue. The Hotel, while scuffed in many ways, wisely puts its first zombie in its third room, right after our first save point, before we've found a single key item -- just like RE1, wonderful! Their contemporaries, though?
Them And Us puts its first zombie in its fourth room, which doesn't seem too bad, until you realize the player has already solved two puzzles by this point. That's nothing compared to the Tormented Souls games, which could easily have you wandering around for thirty minutes before you finally see an enemy. Labyrinth of the Demon King wants me to walk around an empty field for about twenty minutes after the combat tutorial before I'm allowed to actually put some of that to use (and before you protest "but it's a King's Field-like just as much as a survival horror!", every King's Field game killed me in the first room *at least* once, and if you're honest, you'll admit the same is true for you). Heartworm doesn't even come close. And even Flesh Made Fear, a particularly violent grindhouse take on the genre that revels not only in its level of gore but in the giant hordes of various types of undead that it gleefully throws at players, asks you to solve puzzles for about 20 minutes before finally pulling the trigger and getting the party started.
Why?
There is no good answer to that question. Building tension? As if there's any tension to be built in solving item puzzles! The tension in these games comes from making imperfect decisions about how to use limited resources, decisions I'm not making if you're not throwing zombies at me. Giving the player a chance to get the hang of the controls? They can do that with a zombie in their face. Lengthening the game so that the player this the magic "two hour" threshold sooner and can't refund your game? I'm going for a refund if I don't see a zombie in the first two hours!
Thus, in the spirit of the classic "start to crate" rating system for '90s classics, I'd like to introduce "start to zombie", except this time, lower is better and the ideal is zero, a number reached by Resident Evil 2 and 3. For you Silent Hill fans out there, don't worry -- we can also count giant flying bugs and vomiting psychosexual demons. While the original was a measure of when a level designer ran out of ideas, this new version is a measure of how well the developer understands that the "survival" part of "survival horror" is the more important word of the two and that puzzles are here to aid this, not the other way around.
Now, aspiring indie dev, go into your level editor and add a zombie in the first three rooms!
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